Amazon have just released a firmware update for the Kindle Keyboard (aka Kindle 3) which provides the Kindle Keyboard with support for Amazon's new KF8 ebook format that offers many advanced ebook formatting features.

It also includes updated fonts, and several other features of later Kindles.

I was beginning to think that Amazon were never going to release a firmware update for this model. I'm very pleased to be proved wrong.

Did anyone compare the new fonts with the olde ones or even made photos?

I just installed the update and have been reading on the device for thirty minutes. The text does look a little sharper and the blacks look a bit darker, but these improvements are in very small increments. Images do look a lot better; more defined and lifelike. Overall, text to background contrast looks about the same.

New parental controls only extend to turning on and off your ability to access Archived Items, the Kindle Store, and the Experimental Browser with a password. None of the time control features that Jeff was talking about for the newer Kindles are included.

The fonts DO appear darker and more "solid" - I habitually use a sans-serif font for reading - which (of all the standard font choices) shows the improvement the best.

Now I have been switching in and out of different menus and eBooks for around an hour. It seems that fonts are getting darker as time goes on! Perhaps the pixels are adjusting to the new settings; a sort of technical stretch, if you will. I just turned on an overhead light, and now fonts really look darker.